Blog Resurrected for Easter!

The great thing about having a blog nobody reads is that you have a platform for talking about things nobody would otherwise listen to. For Easter Brunch I made lox from scratch. I used this recipe from April's Food and Wine magazine. I was especially taken that it was a recipe from the chef of Sitka and Spruce, a restaurant in Seattle I always mean to visit but never do. Meanwhile, favorite pubs are hit repeatedly. Resolve!

So, here is my photo-journal of Eden's attempt at lox. I was pretty happy with the result (and really, really happy that nobody reported food poisoning).

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 20th, 10 PM: Brine that mother!

I gathered fresh mint, parsley, cilantro and dill from the Portland Farmer's Market and spread the sprigs across the amazing marbled wild salmon I got for an arm and a leg from Whole Foods. Resolve!


One makes a salty mess with shallots, dill, anise and coriander seeds, and garlic, and drowns the salmon (well...).


You drape the mess in paper towels (or if you're a hippie like me, you don't have paper towels on hand so you use a very stained flour towel that you had planned on throwing away long ago).



You wrap the entire thing in plastic wrap. I refer to this step as the Salmon Mummification Project, but Food and Wine calls it something much less interesting. Pop it in the fridge and wait for 36 hours.

SATURDAY, APRIL 23rd, 9 AM: Peel that mother! Unwrap from the plastic, burn the flour towel and recover the dressed fish with (recycled, unbleached) paper towels that you sprung for, embarrassed that you ever thought using a flour towel was appropriate. Mentally apologize to Food and Wine (and, your guests for brunch tomorrow). Rewrap in plastic, place back in fridge.

SUNDAY, APRIL 24th, 9 AM: Hehasrisenhehasrisenindeed. Peel that mother! Again! Scrap the dressings off of your lovely fish and place it on a bakers rack in the fridge to chill out for two hours. The goal of this step, disturbingly enough, is a fish that's "slightly tacky". 'Where is that flour towel?' you think.


SUNDAY, APRIL 24th, 12:00 PM: The reveal! Of course, I failed to take pictures at this critical point. A picture of Andrea, protesting that she can't eat another bite and then stacking a bagel with more lox, is the best I could do -- and good proof, I think, of the project's success.


(THE REST OF THE MENU: besides the lox, on Kettleman's bagels with whipped cream cheese, red onions and capers, Easter brunch included a spinach and goat cheese quiche, a rhubarb jam with red chile and lemon, a sweet cream cheese with honey and hazelnuts, a fabulous dressed salad with crunchy greens, and plenty of mimosas with raspberries.)

Creepy Christmas TO YOU.

Recently my sister complained that I hadn't updated my blog in sometime. I'm thinking that this writing platform might've run its course. The good news is not that I've stopped writing altogether, but I am busily writing more substantial things - articles, short stories and of late, even a (short) film treatment. Exciting. So, just to keep the masses happy (and by masses I mean my only reader, my sister, who refuses to comment on my blog except as her dog) this photo. Merry Christmas, all.

Fall 2008

Fall 2008
Originally uploaded by Eden from Sweden

Sweet summer.

Seriously, that's it?

This will go down in history as the summer that never was (my East coast friends had the opposite problem, it was the summer that was Too Damn Hot.) That said, I did have some nice moments, even if I was wearing long sleeves when I had them. I'm listening to the rain fall outside in the pitch black (even though it's only 8pm) and I know I need to face the facts. Summer's out, Fall's in. And, against all common sense, I'm a little excited.

So, here's scenes from my too-quick, too-cold summer in redux. Onward!

(top to bottom, more on my flickr page) A week in Maine with my favorite people; Newport, Oregon with my mom; a documentary on the cemetery shown in the cemetery; Hitchcock's Blackmail shown on the rooftop of the Hotel Delux, looking over downtown Portland; A lovely spur-of-the-moment day trip to Seattle with my sister, and a hike to Falcon Cape (near Cannon Beach, Oregon) with Canela the Explorer.

Dinner, July 18, 2010

Dinner, July 18, 2010
Originally uploaded by Eden from Sweden

How do I forget again and again that cooking makes everything better?

Maine is not a pile of books by Stephen King.

Cranky Sue's Crabby Cakes, now defunct.

I have a very distinct memory of sitting on the Mouse House porch-couch a few summers ago, clutching an "Eyewitness Vietnam" guide and explaining how most of the fun of travel - for me - is the relaxing armchair travel. The imagining was the thing.

I meant it, but I also realized that it sounded sad. Obviously, all the books on the history of the Eiffel Tower cannot measure ten minutes of standing in the crowds and summer heat, with its arches like a steel halo over your head. I can't deny this. But I also know that in travel, something always surprises you. One of my strongest memories of Paris in July is the stench of dog poop. Caught off guard (that wasn't in the guidebooks) I wasn't prepared to shrug it off. It was also an earned memory, not borrowed from a book.
My love of arm chair travel means I have several piles of travel writing and guidebook editions to places I've never been. Fifteen dollars, in my mind, is a cheap placebo when you can't finance a summer in Sweden.

In two weeks I'll be in Maine for the first time. My only literary GPS markers for Maine are Bill Bryson and Stephen King, which is unsettling. I've lived in New England and know that the trees grow thick and right up to the edge of the lake. I know Anne of Green Gables lived a few hundred miles northeast. I'm pleased with the holistic route that comes from traveling from Portland to Portland, on opposite coasts. I'll continue to dig into the books and blogs and I am excited about what I'll find.

But I'm sure nothing will match that moment when I see a lobster struggling in a cage in the water, or hear that elusive Maine accent for the first time, or, or, or...that's the part that I have to discover for myself by going, by getting off my proverbial porch-couch, that my books can't experience for me. And if I run into Stephen King when I'm out berry picking, well, I'll be prepared for that too.

When summer isn't sunshine.

Maybe it was the 3,000 straight days of rain and cold and gray. Even though the weather has edged toward and hinted at summer, this fifth day of July, and weathermen are promising it'll completely flip the switch over to 90 tomorrow (from 65 today)...still. Something broke, or at least became undeniable to me. Everything is too tight. Job, little apartment, neighborhood haunts, the city -- and probably if I could afford to escape it, the state and the region. Mama needs a change of pace before it's fall and the gray sets in again, for real.

How to fix this? I'm not sure.

I ironed a giant pile of shirts, for distraction.

I mopped the kitchen floor, for clarification.

I joined my sister on a hike on the coast, for a new perspective (but it was gray there, too).

When mass exodus from your life isn't an option, Oprah-types suggest you hug your tired life in a new way, try to see new details in the old. So. At the beach I examined shells, coves and tidal pools. At home, I rearranged and purged. Still, I feel stuck. I'm thinking maybe I should start doing things backward, for a new perspective. That's how stuck I am. I'll report back, hopefully from a more sunny place.